Dusty Rose
by Sweetie Amoeba
Summary: Marcia struggles with homosexuality. One-shot.


Cherry used to paint her nails a sick-looking dusty rose color that you always disliked. It looked good with her makeup and she knew how to match clothes with it, but decorated nails always seemed impractical to you. They serve no purpose other then looking good. When she stops all of a sudden and her nails become short and unpainted, it makes you nervous.

Just because you like the way other girls' fingers feel inside you doesn't mean you're a dyke. You aren't anything like that. This is recreational, a hobby, something you'll get bored with in a couple months. You attribute it to some kind of mindless whim, an instinct to be rebellious. You could stop if you wanted, just flip a switch inside your mind and go back to normal. We build our own realities and you're building yours.

But it sure as hell doesn't feel like a phase when she's stripped to her underclothes in your bedroom on a Saturday night asking if her nails look okay this way.

There was a weekend party at one of the big houses on the south side. A few kids from other high schools were there, kids you'd never met before, all socs. Side-stepping past people in the hallway in your black shoes, and there was a rainstorm that night and people were dancing and snapping their fingers in a sort of rock-and-roll frenzy that set your mind in a trance and gave you the energy to dance for hours without stopping.

There was a girl in a short dress who pulled you onto the makeshift dance floor with her small hands and meshed you into her group of friends, and the five or six of you whirled in a circle, trying not to fall.

She guided you upstairs to one of the bedrooms to do your hair and when her fingers brushed past your ear and you heard her whispering voice, it excited a nervous, youthful life-force in you that you couldn't identify.

You tilted your head back, giving her more room, and when she placed a shy kiss on your temple you didn't pull away. Maybe she was slightly drunk, and you were still charged with adrenaline from the rock and roll music, but when her fingers slipped into your mouth and then down below your dress, when you felt her push them inside and saw her blurry smile, you understood immediately.

You lay in bed that night, holding your breath and ill with guilt.

And you never saw her again but you remember everything.

And when Cherry takes off her nail polish and everything is neat and clean, you picture those fingers touching you, spread wide on the bed, lying there and being taken under her watching eyes.

(It's always been bad but you keep going)

She takes a bottle of pearly polish off the dresser and sets to work. You feel funny all night, in your bed with her in a sleeping bag on the floor, lying a few feet away and knowing you could just climb down there and she'd let you right in...

The foulmouthed whores with painted eyes and ironed hair speak to you like you're twelve years old, and everyone's got a cross in their bedroom and they leave the door open when their boyfriends come over because no one's home anyway, and the things they let boys do to them sound like torture.

You grew up in a house full of flowers and fruit and art and books, as bohemian as socs could get, which is not very. Mom was permissive about dating, thinking of your newfound interest in boys as something inevitable, and to be smiled upon.

(It never happened and the years went on and on)

Your mother smokes long white cigarettes and has a lush, raspy voice. In the morning she cooks for you and tells you stories, big sweet adventures, about her lovers before Dad and nights in college and all the beautiful things about youth and freedom.

Are you a secret whore, putting out or trying hard not to? Are you going to marry someone rich and spend your life as a wife and mother and smoke your cigarettes in the afternoon and inherit all Mom's china and brass?

You could quit girls if you wanted, but what's the point?

If anyone tried hard enough, they could tell just by looking at you. Your short fingernails, your modest dresses and general indifference...

(To have to go on living this way might be the worst thing yet)

But you will anyway. You'll have your fun.

And you'll keep going.


End file.
